Nigella Lawson has become embroiled in a legal battle with the boss of a PR
firm after he published lurid allegations hinting at the reasons behind the
break-up of her marriage to Charles Saatchi.

The PR boss, who cannot be named for legal reasons, published a series of claims about problems within the marriage, suggesting they were the real reason behind the couple’s notorious row at a London restaurant.

Mr Saatchi accepted a police caution after he was photographed in June gripping his then wife’s neck and tweaking her nose, and within weeks of their publication the couple had divorced.

Miss Lawson, 53, cited her 70-year-old husband’s “unreasonable behaviour” in the divorce papers, but neither party spoke at the time of the divorce about the exact reasons behind it.

Mr Saatchi initially described his hands-on row with his wife at Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair as a “playful tiff” and also claimed he was “just wiping her nose”.

Today the legal firm acting for Miss Lawson, contacted newspapers with a warning not to repeat the allegations.

The man said he had published the statements online because he believed newspapers were too afraid of the television cook’s “highly litigious” lawyers to print the allegations made in them. Miss Lawson married Mr Saatchi, an art collector and advertising executive, 10 years ago following the death of her first husband, John Diamond, from cancer.

She is currently in Los Angeles filming for her US television show The Taste. Her spokesman said she would not be commenting on the allegations.

Since the couple’s divorce, Mr Saatchi has been linked with the fashion stylist Trinny Woodall. Speaking at his home in Chelsea, Mr Saatchi said: “I’ve got nothing to say. There is nothing to say, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Really, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The couple’s divorce was granted in July, less than two months after photographs of their row were published. Neither Mr Saatchi nor Miss Lawson was present for the hearing, which lasted less than one minute, at the High Court in London.

Miss Lawson has two children, Cosima and Bruno, from her first marriage, while Mr Saatchi has a daughter, Phoebe, from his marriage to Kay Hartenstein, an American-born art collector.

Mr Saatchi donated his Chelsea art gallery, including more than 200 works of art, to the public in 2010.

His ex-wife, the daughter of the former chancellor Lord Lawson, began her career as a restaurant critic, before going on to write a series of cookery books and star in food programmes, such as Nigella Bites and Nigella Feasts.

After a long period of public silence following publication of the photographs, she began to post messages again on Twitter in August.

She has since updated followers regularly with new recipes and photographs of what she has been cooking.

Her former husband, made a series of statements to the press in the wake of the incident.